Reading Classic RuneQuest: Preamble

I started playing RuneQuest with the latest edition, “RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha”, colloquially known as “RQG”. I had fallen in love with the setting via its gigantic¹, critically acclaimed, system-agnostic “Guide to Glorantha”², so using the official game to bring it to the table felt like the next logical move. RQG looked great at first, even though I was immediately skeptical of some of its most idiosyncratic mechanics, like Strike Ranks³. But there was a lot of cool stuff! Divine magic that requires worship at your god’s temples to recharge! Rune affinities that model your personality! Passions that connect to your community!

But after a couple years of play, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.